


how to fall in love with the idiot vampire who's about to kill you

by elliptical



Series: the most self-indulgent vampire AU of all time [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (Ex) Vampire Hunter Ronan Lynch, Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M, Multi, Self-Indulgent, Starvation, Vampire Adam Parrish, Vampire Bites, Vampire Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 23:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20479418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: Before Ronan could even process the danger, Adam backed up three paces.  Ronan turned to find him with a hand clapped over his mouth and nose, shoulders tense, convulsive shudders rippling down his spine.  All at once, Ronan understood.  He faced Adam fully, his movements slow, hands visible, like he was standing up to a wild animal.  In some ways, he was.“Parrish.Adam.Christ, when did you lasteat?”Adam’s eyes were wide, the irises swallowed by black and the silver reflection of moonlight.  His gaze flicked to Ronan’s wounded hand.  Specifically, the drop of blood falling into the grass.





	how to fall in love with the idiot vampire who's about to kill you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [muchlessvermillion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muchlessvermillion/gifts).

> one of my girlfriends and i are each writing an au with the same premise: vampire hunter ronan, vampire researcher gansey, vampires blue and adam. from there the concepts diverge quite a bit
> 
> this is pretty much the most self indulgent thing i've ever written in my Life.

It was a nick on Ronan’s thumb that almost killed him.

The October night was cool and cloudless, a low breeze ruffling the fields surrounding the Barns like ocean waves. The scattered starlight and moonbeams offered enough visibility to examine a car engine, which was how Ronan had convinced Adam Parrish to spend the night heaving exasperated sighs at his BMW. Despite Ronan’s fierce love for the car, he was not always “responsible” with it. There was a laundry list of repairs that needed to be made, and Adam was better with cars than anyone Ronan knew.

The pair of them were leaning over the open hood, close enough for their elbows to brush, when Ronan’s thumb snagged and slid against a sharp edge of metal. It should have been nothing, just a muttered “motherfuck” and thirty seconds pressing a clean rag against the cut while the bleeding stopped. At worst, an argument about tetanus shots. But Adam went rigid beside him.

Before Ronan could even process the danger, Adam backed up three paces. Ronan turned to find him with a hand clapped over his mouth and nose, shoulders tense, convulsive shudders rippling down his spine. All at once, Ronan understood. He faced Adam fully, his movements slow, hands visible, like he was standing up to a wild animal. In some ways, he was.

“Parrish. _Adam._ Christ, when did you last _eat_?”

Adam’s eyes were wide, the irises swallowed by black and the silver reflection of moonlight. His gaze flicked to Ronan’s wounded hand. Specifically, the drop of blood falling into the grass.

“That’s not rhetorical, shithead.” Ronan’s heart was pounding, but it wasn’t fear for himself that had adrenaline singing through his veins. There were so many animals out here, all of whom had put their trust in him. He’d be damned if he let them get hurt. “Tell me when you last ate.”

Adam tore his gaze away from Ronan’s bleeding hand and met his eyes. He lowered his own hand enough to exhale through his nose, but kept his mouth firmly covered. The pretense was pointless; if Ronan had had any doubt that Adam’s fangs were out, it was washed away by the low hiss in his voice. “Three weeks ago.”

Ronan was gonna kill him.

Ronan was not _actually_ going to kill him. This clarification was important because a year ago, the sentiment might have been literal. A year ago, Ronan’s main knowledge about vampires centered on the right ribs to shove a stake between. Then Blue Sargent and her coven of undead women had fallen into his life at the exact same time as Adam Parrish and his idiotic independent loner complex, and Ronan had had to rethink a few things.

Even now, it was hard to silence his father’s voice in his head, cataloguing danger points. The rapid clenching and unclenching of Adam’s fist at his side. The hiss. The overblown pupils. The coiled hunting tension. There was not a doubt in Ronan’s mind that Adam was hungry enough to kill him.

Three fucking _weeks._ Blue had a scheduled feeding with a donor every Wednesday, and she tended to snack on Gansey inbetween (much to Ronan's displeasure), and she was still tetchy and snappish with hanger on Tuesdays. Adam’s hunger had blown past snappishness and straight into uncontrollable need.

But he’d backed away. Ronan knew that the second he’d scented the blood, Adam could have torn him to pieces. There wouldn’t have been time to register what was happening, let alone how to fight back. Instead, Adam had backed away, and he was retaining the presence of mind to answer questions, and he was rooting himself in place to avoid losing control.

There was not a doubt in Ronan’s mind that Adam did not _want_ to kill him.

“There’s blood in the house.” Ronan had to get him inside, away from the pastures and the stables. “Human blood.”

Adam’s eyes narrowed.

“I hit up one of my dad’s old contacts. It’s donated. All AB, because fuck people with AB blood, they can get a transfusion from anyone. You can have whatever you want, but we gotta get in the house without you tearing my throat out first. Just keep your shit together for thirty more seconds, Adam. Christ.”

Ronan could sense the suspicion, hesitation. Fear. _I’ve got blood in the house_ was about one step removed from _I’ve got candy in my van,_ but it was also the truth. Ronan’s past self had predicted something like this might happen.

He had, at first, been intrigued by the idea of a vampire who avoided blood. Less than three weeks of knowing Adam and Blue had been enough to change that opinion. If he had to pick which of them was more dangerous to the innocent human population, the answer would _not_ be the spitfire rights-crusading tiny girl who’d never been without a steady blood supply in her life.

So he’d gotten the blood. If Adam or Blue stumbled upon the fridge, he figured he could always take refuge in meanness. Spread his hands, curl his lip. _Snacks. Because I’m a gracious fucking host._ And if they didn’t, well, he’d have it if it was ever needed.

Like right now.

He matched Adam’s pace as the other backed toward the house, keeping his body positioned between the hungry vampire and any of the paths to the farm animals. Adam braced his arm against the porch railing and pulled himself up, other hand still clamped over his mouth. He hesitated there, watching Ronan, gaze sharp and calculating. For his part, Ronan kept his pace steady and even. It wouldn’t help to act like Adam was an inch away from snapping. Better to take on the de-escalation stance of a hostage negotiator.

Adam leaned away from him when he stepped onto the porch. Ronan opened the door and stepped into the farmhouse kitchen. The first thing he did was grab a dish towel and press it against his hand. Then he turned to Adam, who’d entered silent as a wraith but was still hanging near the doorframe. “C’mon. It’s downstairs.”

Adam’s low, inhuman hiss was a warning. The thing about people, vampires and humans alike, was that fear made them more likely to do stupid shit. And part of Adam was afraid of Ronan. Ronan felt the sting of it like a chip of ice in his chest, made worse because he knew it was fair. Adam had no way of knowing that Ronan would rather chew off his left leg than hurt him. This house had belonged to a family of vampire hunters for ages; the basement had probably seen more horror than the rest of Henrietta combined; Ronan would have a much easier time killing a vampire in an enclosed, inescapable space.

If Ronan didn’t explain fast, he was going to lose Adam entirely. “I put a fridge down there. It’s the only place in the house without windows. Minus the bathrooms, I guess. I didn’t want to stick a bunch of blood anywhere that might be flooded by sunlight. I swear to God I’m not bullshitting you.”

Adam closed the door and rested his forehead against it, shutting his eyes. Whether he couldn’t speak or just didn’t trust his voice was impossible to tell. If Ronan could get him to stay still, he’d go downstairs and grab a couple blood bags himself. Bring them up so Adam didn’t have to string himself out worse. But Ronan was also pretty sure Adam would bolt in the time it took him to come back.

One more try. “Gansey would never talk to me again if I let something happen to you. He’d never forgive me. He loves you so fucking much.” The sentiment didn’t have the meanness or bitterness it might have once upon a time; it was just the truth. “Think what you want about me, but you know I wouldn’t risk that.”

If Adam couldn’t believe that Ronan wouldn’t hurt _him_, he could at least believe that Ronan wouldn’t hurt Gansey. Ronan’s devotion to Gansey was a worship that approached fanaticism, and he made no attempts to hide it.

Adam nodded slowly and pushed himself away from the door. His form was a blur, there and then gone, heading down the steps to the basement. Ronan followed at a much more relaxed pace, flicking the lightswitch because his human eyes couldn’t see jack shit in the pitch darkness.

The basement was not, in fact, a horrible torture chamber. Aside from the lack of windows, it wasn’t much different from the upstairs. A low ceiling, plaster walls painted with varying shades of pale blue, couches, carpeting, a throw rug. And the fridge, a high-volume unit advertised as capable of storing up to eight hundred pounds of moose meat.

Adam had already opened the fridge by the time Ronan reached the bottom of the stairs, his body haloed by the unit’s cool blue light. There was a bag of scarlet liquid in his hand, but his fangs had yet to tear into it. As Ronan’s booted feet landed on the carpet, he turned with a snarl. “_Don’t watch me._”

“No problem.” Ronan wasn’t expecting a thank-you. Now that Adam had enough blood to stop losing his goddamn mind, the emergency had passed. Supervision wasn’t required.

Ronan turned and headed upstairs, checking his watch. The incident had occurred minutes before Adam would’ve needed to start home to avoid the rising sun. He busied himself by walking from room to room, drawing the blackout curtains over each window to remove the dangers of UV light. Those he’d put up mostly for Blue’s sake, since she was much more likely to hang out at the Barns during daylight. Adam rarely let himself stay anywhere except his shitty rented church room, a fact that irritated and perplexed Gansey, Blue, and Ronan alike.

Ronan would be less annoyed by the shitty church room if it didn’t scare him so fucking bad. Adam’s blackout curtains were cheap and nailed to the top of the window. It would be so easy for a tear to send sunlight skittering across the floor like a poisoned anti-shadow. And the room was positioned on the third floor; if the church went up in flames, there’d be nowhere to run.

It took enough time to draw the curtains for him to be confident that Adam must be finished. With any luck, Adam had also refrained from disappearing into the predawn. Ronan called, “I’m coming down, make yourself decent,” as he descended the stairs.

He found Adam sitting on one of the couches with his legs pulled up to his chest. There was blood on the corner of his mouth that he hadn’t washed away, but otherwise, he wasn’t anywhere near as wrecked as Ronan expected. It didn’t even look like his clothes were stained.

"I thought you might've been lying," Adam said.

Ronan didn't need to ask what about. He knew it had taken unbelievable trust for Adam to come inside at all, let alone head downstairs.

And Ronan had to wonder: If he hadn't had the foresight to stock the fridge, would he have lied? Niall Lynch would have. It wouldn't even have occurred to Niall _not_ to lie to trap a vampire. Did Ronan have that same ice in his veins?

No, he didn't think so. For better or for worse, there wasn't a bone in his body that could purposefully hurt or trap or scare Adam. Left without other recourse, he'd have let Adam kill him on the porch.

Ronan met Adam's steady gaze. "I don't lie."

Adam nodded. "I need to get home."

“It’s too late to go back to St. Agnes,” Ronan said. “I drew the curtains.”

The hunting tension had left Adam’s body, but the misery had not. His reply was toneless. "Great."

“‘Oh no, I have to spend the day in a five thousand square foot house with WiFi instead of a shitty baking tinderbox, woe is me.’” In actuality, Ronan’s relief that Adam was safely away from the shitty tinderbox could not be measured in words, but expressions of sincerity weren’t his style. Besides, they were more likely to make Adam wall himself off. “Pick a place and get some sleep.”

“Okay.” Adam uncurled himself and walked past Ronan, his whole body stiff as he ascended the stairs. Ronan was gonna have to fight with him later, a verbal sparring match that started with _what the actual fuck is wrong with you,_ but now wasn’t the time. With the adrenaline wearing off, Ronan was tired himself. He needed to clear his head, so he laid down on the couch Adam had previously occupied and closed his eyes.

In Ronan’s dream, his father was alive. Niall Lynch had been the center of Ronan’s world once upon a time, and he’d loved Ronan, and Ronan had never experienced the cruelty that lurked below his skin. Ronan and his father had had a good relationship.

It was not a good dream.

Ronan stood outside St. Agnes with a can of gasoline in his hand. The fumes were making him dizzy, but he splashed it along the entryway, against the walls, over the porch. There was something nagging at the back of his mind, something wrong. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here.

Niall clapped Ronan on the shoulder as he returned with the empty can. “This way’s easiest. If you’re going up against a bloodsucker, you trap them somewhere they can’t get their jaws in you. Don’t fight ‘em one-on-one. You can be the best boxer in the world, and you’ll still lose.”

Ronan nodded. His head hurt.

Niall lit a match.

There was a reason Ronan had to protect this church. Something far more important than the sanctity of holy ground. He just needed a second to remember it. “Wait,” he said.

Niall either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. He threw the match.

As it hit the gas-soaked porch, Ronan woke with a shout.

He was relieved to discover that he was still in the basement of the Barns. His watch told him it was noon. But the horror of the dream was hard to shake off. He knew, logically, that Adam was safe. Adam prioritized survival well enough not to have done something stupid like pulling back a curtain and ashing himself. The thing was, Ronan could either lay here repeatedly imagining Adam’s skin smoking to nothing, or he could reassure the non-logical part of his brain.

He chose the latter. If he couldn’t find Adam, he’d call for him, but his first pass through the house was silent. He didn’t want to wake Adam up.

That particular worry turned out to be unfounded, because Adam wasn’t asleep. “I’m in here,” a voice called from the sitting room when Ronan hit the second-floor landing. “What do you want.”

By the time Ronan reached the room, Adam had switched on the desk lamp so the space wouldn’t be flooded with overhead light. He should have been back to mostly-human. Certainly there were enough empty bags downstairs that he couldn’t be starving.

And yet.

There was something wrong with Adam.

It didn’t take a deep personal background in vampire body language to tell that he was suffering. Even adjusting for expected corpse-like behavior, he had the demeanor of a sickly and ill-fated child in a Victorian novel. His mouth was pinched, a deep furrow between his brow; it was hard to make out more than that because he’d cast himself in silhouette. Ronan suspected it was a subtle way of keeping the orange glow of the desk lamp from hurting his eyes. Adam wasn’t nearly as hard to read as he thought.

And Ronan wasn’t sure anymore that corpse-like demeanor was standard. Blue certainly managed to be one of the most (sometimes annoyingly) vibrant and passionate and argumentative people he’d ever met. There wasn’t a thing about her energy that read anything less than human. Adam, on the other hand, looked like a walking stereotype.

Ronan’s largest priority was that Adam would stop suffering for Adam’s sake. This had, however, not historically been a high point on Adam’s priorities list. If Ronan started in with the Gansey-like intervention-speak _I care about you_ and _I’m worried fucking sick_ and _I can’t keep doing this, I can’t keep watching you kill yourself when there’s simple goddamn solutions being offered, you can’t keep doing this to me, to any of us,_ there would be a fight and an escalation and he’d forget what he was trying to accomplish in the first place. Which was exactly what Adam wanted.

Ronan said, “You’re gonna kill Gansey.”

The words landed with the physicality of a smack. Adam flinched, hard, and his jaw tightened and his spine stiffened and his shoulders curled inward. Ronan refused to feel guilty. It was a carefully calculated angle, sure -- focusing on something precious to both of them, rather than either of their respective lives -- but it was also true. Ronan wasn’t a liar.

He waited for Adam’s move. Anything would be fair game: lashing back, cold detachment, walking away, even physical blows. Ronan had never known Adam to surrender to any criticism without a wall of ire and defensiveness.

Adam sat down on the couch and lowered his head into his hands.

He said, “This won’t happen again.”

“Yeah. You’re damn fucking right it won’t.” Ronan pulled his shirt over his head and wadded it up between his hands. “Because if it had been Gansey with you and not me, he’d be dead.”

Ronan couldn’t see Adam’s face, but it wasn’t difficult to feel the misery radiating from him. He finally managed, in a choked whisper, “I could have stopped.”

“Great. Cool. Awesome.” This was about the point where Ronan wanted to smash and shatter and slam and tear every object he could get his hands on, scream his frustration at the sky. He wasn’t Gansey or Blue. He didn’t have Gansey’s overbearing mother hen instincts or Blue’s ability to dress people down in a few sentences. He definitely had her talent for insult and mockery, but had no idea how to employ it in a way that ended with Adam apologizing.

He allowed himself three glorious seconds to imagine punching the wall. “What was the plan, Parrish? If I hadn’t cut my hand? You’re always a man with a _fucking_ plan, right? Where was your next meal coming from?”

“I get paid on Monday.” There, finally, was a trace of defensiveness, irritation that Ronan could possibly accuse Adam of being planless. “I was gonna go to the butcher shop then.”

Ronan was suddenly dizzy. He sat down, hard, on the couch beside Adam. “You can’t afford to eat?”

“I can afford to eat. On Monday.”

“You said it’s been _three weeks._”

“I had other stuff to buy.”

“Fucking _hell._”

“I’m fine now anyway. You gave me blood.” Adam’s jaw clenched. Ronan could tell it took an effort and active pride swallowing to add, “Thank you.”

“But you’re still thirsty.”

“Don’t make assumptions about me.”

“Am I wrong?”

Adam curled his fingers around the edge of the couch cushions, digging them in like that was the only thing standing between himself, controlled, and himself, fists flying. He didn’t respond.

“Cool.” Ronan set his wadded shirt on the arm of the couch, stretched his arms above his head, and cracked his knuckles. “Here’s the deal. If you tell Sargent I’ve listened to one fucking word of her ‘misconception correction’ lessons I’m gonna get in touch with my dormant hunter instincts or whatever the fuck. But she says human blood from the vein is best, and I’m inclined to believe her. So now that you’ve wrested yourself from the jaws of ferality, you’re gonna bite my shoulder, and I’m gonna tape it up, and next week we’ll do it again. Congratulations, you’ve got a donor. Saturdays good?”

Adam straightened up and faced Ronan, his expression both disbelieving and offended. The effect was slightly diminished by the blown pupils and hint of fang poking over his lower lip. If he was doing well enough not to need the pick-me-up, Ronan was reasonably sure the concept wouldn’t have tipped him straight back into hunting mode.

“I don’t bite people.” The words were carefully enunciated so they wouldn’t be slurred by the extra teeth. The way Adam’s eyes rested on Ronan’s neck was doing something weird and not-altogether-unpleasant to Ronan’s stomach. He mentally smacked away the interest. _Priorities._

Ronan scoffed. “Bullshit. You’ve bitten Gansey.”

“_Once._ And that was different.” Adam’s breath caught around the _was_, elongating it into a low hiss.

“Oh, please. What, you’re a vampire prude? Can’t suck someone’s blood unless you can also suck their face?”

“It’s got nothing to do with that,” Adam snapped.

The hiss was getting worse; the more flustered he got, the harder it was to hold it back, which turned into a vicious cycle. Ronan supposed it was uncharitable to bring up Adam’s weird semi-nebulous relationship to Gansey, but it had served a purpose. At least now he knew that offering to make out was unlikely to sway Adam in favor of bloodsucking.

“Then tell me. How’s Gansey different?”

“He wanted to know for _research._ He wanted the data, he was curious, he wasn’t _pitying_ me. And I didn’t take much. I bit him for _his_ sake, not mine.”

Ronan digested this information. “So if Gansey offered just because he wanted you to stop _starving_, you’d refuse.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve never bitten anyone but him.”

“Yeah.”

“_Christ._” Ronan could feel a headache threatening in his temples. “Well, no wonder you’re so fucked up all the time. God damn. You feel like enlightening me about why starvation is better than literally _anything_ else?”

A snarl curled Adam’s lip, there and then gone, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flash of anger. One of his elongated teeth nicked his mouth; Ronan could see a tiny trickle of blood ready to spill down his chin.

When he did speak, his voice was deadly calm. “Some things are intolerable.”

It was not, Ronan surmised, that blood-drinking itself was intolerable. If that was the case, Adam would have refused Gansey's curiosity. But there were aspects of drinking from a human that Adam wouldn’t be able to stand. The fear of losing control, of causing destruction, was just one of them. There was also the concept of depending on other people, and the vulnerability, and the fact that Adam was allergic to being cared for. Ronan was butting heads with the same instincts that sent him roosting at the top of a tinderbox instead of nesting with Blue or Gansey or anyone else who’d offered.

Adam would not accept anything that compromised his independence.

Ronan let out a long, quiet sigh through his nostrils. “Look. I’m not gonna force you, okay? You’re right, you’re probably good until Monday. I’m just saying, from where I’m sitting, you’ve got one hell of an inconvenient medical condition. If biting me’s gonna treat that medical condition, I say you grit your teeth and act like it’s a pain-in-the-ass insulin shot. Saves you from the mothering of Gansey and the wrath of Sargent. We don’t gotta be weird about it. But if you’d rather suffer pointlessly and worry everyone who gives a shit about you, fine. Your body, your choice.”

It was impossible to tell whether this perspective was having an effect on Adam’s resolve. He was silent for a solid minute; Ronan counted the seconds. Then Adam said, “You won’t look at me the same.”

“False.” Adam shot him an incredulous look, so Ronan added, “You’ve been a freak of nature the whole time I’ve known you, Parrish. I’m still gonna look at you like a freak of nature whether you bite me or not.”

“That’s… weirdly the most reassuring thing you’ve ever said.”

“I’m a wordsmith. You can’t get poetry like this anywhere else. So are you gonna stop being the stupidest person alive, or what.”

“I’ll do it under one condition.”

“Lay it on me.”

“If I’m taking too much, knee me in the groin.”

Ronan barked a startled laugh. “No worries there. Now scoot so I can kick my legs up. Human juice boxes have the right to be comfortable. And to lie down in case they get woozy. I’m not gonna ruin my badass reputation by swooning the second you get your teeth in me.”

Adam bore being ousted from the couch with good grace, allowing Ronan to unfold his six-foot-seven frame until his head rested on the couch arm and his legs dangled over the other end. How this could possibly be comfortable was a mystery to any onlooker, but Ronan insisted he’d achieved couch potato nirvana.

As Adam crouched on the floor beside the couch, doing a scientific appraisal of Ronan’s shoulders to gauge the best angle, Ronan propped himself up on his elbow. “Gonna be real with you. If you bite me from down there and get distracted, you’re gonna open up the longest, most annoying laceration of all time. Come up here.”

“There’s no room, dickwad.”

“Hang out on my legs. That’ll make it easier to knee you if you’re killing me.”

“You are _not_ successfully making this un-weird,” Adam grumbled, but he climbed up anyway, bracing his knees on either side of Ronan’s hips and splaying his palms flat against the space beneath Ronan’s collarbone.

Ronan was determined not to betray the sudden physical reaction that would _actually_ make things weird, but Adam’s eyes narrowed, and he realized his racing heart would be painfully obvious to a vampire. Fuck his life.

“I’m not gonna do it if you’re scared,” Adam said. “I’m not that desperate.”

“I’m not scared.”

Ronan did almost pass out when Adam leaned down and pressed his nose against the side of his neck, but it wasn’t from fear. His breath left him in a panted exhale. “_Fuck._” Adam’s hands hadn’t moved from his chest; if anything, they were pressing him down more firmly against the couch, betraying the same kind of strength that let Blue’s five-foot-nothing body hurl Ronan clear across a room.

Fuck his _life._

“You’re not scared,” Adam conceded. Ronan could feel the featherlight whisper of his breath against his throat, goosebumps rising on his skin. “You’d smell different.”

“I told you I don’t lie.”

“Last chance to tell me to stop. I will. I’ll stop.” Adam’s fingers flexed against Ronan’s skin like a cat itching to knead, and Ronan had the realization that however hard he was working to sound normal, Adam was working harder. It had to take improbable amounts of self control to keep seeming human when every instinct in your body wanted to take another person apart like prey.

A shudder rippled down Adam’s spine. Ronan couldn’t see his face, still buried against his neck, but when Adam spoke again, his voice edged toward a whine. “_God,_ you smell good.”

“Now who’s making it weird?” Ronan wrapped an arm around Adam’s waist to anchor him, an instinctive gesture he couldn’t explain away if he tried. “I’m not stopping you.”

Adam retained the presence of mind to move his mouth away from Ronan’s throat, a fact for which Ronan was eternally grateful. The sting as Adam’s teeth met in his shoulder wasn’t as bad as he expected, but his arm tightened around Adam’s waist. He had equally little explanation for why he pushed the fingers of his other hand into Adam’s hair, the strands soft against his roughened skin. But as long as no one asked, he’d be fine.

The drinking was the part that Adam found unbearable. Ronan closed his eyes and held onto him, his body still. Because at least part of what Adam couldn’t stand was _shame,_ the shame of needing, of being vulnerable, of being seen. For Blue, vampirism was an intrinsic part of identity. For Adam, it was an affliction to be hidden at all costs. Ronan knew that if he reacted to Adam’s need with disgust or panic, he’d break whatever fragile thing they’d just spun between them.

Fortunately -- and somewhat surprisingly -- neither disgust nor panic made an appearance. Instead, Ronan’s chest ached with something suspiciously like tenderness. Adam had been suffering for such a long time. But when he latched onto Ronan’s shoulder, his whole body relaxed, muscles going limp enough for him to settle against Ronan’s chest. It wasn’t the frantic desperation with which he’d torn through the blood bags earlier. It was powerful, soul-quaking relief.

Ronan thought, _You can take anything you want. Take my whole fucking life if it helps like this._

He didn’t speak the sentiment aloud. He wasn’t sure Adam would be able to decipher the difference between tenderness and pity.

Adam didn’t take too much, which was good, since Ronan wasn’t sure he had the heart to shove him away. When he was finished, he pulled his mouth from Ronan’s shoulder. Ronan braced for him to extricate himself and throw the defensive walls back up, but instead, Adam rested his head quietly on Ronan’s chest.

“It is better from the vein,” he admitted.

Ronan’s arm was still curled tight around Adam’s waist. He made zero attempt to rectify the situation. “You know,” Ronan said, “for the smartest guy I know, you are _such_ a fucking moron.”

Adam hummed, apparently too high on relief to contest this. “Saturdays work. I’ll pay you.”

“Saturdays it is. I’m not taking your money.”

Adam didn’t protest this, though Ronan didn’t put much stock in that. They’d argue about it later, he was sure, when Adam had the presence of mind to pick pointless fights again.

Ronan allowed himself the luxury of pressing his face into Adam’s hair and inhaling, just for a moment. “Better?”

“Mm.” Adam failed to offer a more eloquent response, mostly because his breathing had relaxed into the even rhythm of sleep. Ronan’s chest did the tenderness-tightening thing again, though his brain added a hearty side helping of eye roll. Adam had been so fucked up on hunger and pain that a single decent meal was enough to make him pass out. Ronan couldn’t fathom how exhausted he must have been.

When he maneuvered them both off the couch, it was with all the carefulness in the world. Adam might have the strength of a supernatural being, but he was also as thin and light as one would expect from a starving creature. Ronan didn’t have any trouble carrying him to his bedroom, laying Adam on the bed before double-checking the stability of the blackout curtains. His fierce victory was that Adam didn’t stir at all; he just curled up around the pillows and slumbered deeper.

Ronan brought the first aid kit into the bathroom so he could disinfect the wound. His shoulder was darkened with a matching pattern of punctures in the shape of Adam’s sharp teeth. The bite was as neat and controlled as everything else about Adam; he hadn’t torn the skin or ripped anything unnecessary. As first vampire attacks went, it was about as un-dramatic as possible.

Ronan stole a glance over his shoulder, eyeing the sleeping boy through the open door. He was beginning to understand the attachment that Gansey and Blue had to Adam. His pulse thrummed in his ears.

As he turned back to the mirror, a shark smile stole over his face. Niall Lynch would’ve died on the spot if he could see Ronan now, offering bed and blood to a vampire. There was almost nothing Ronan could do to invoke his father’s disapproval; this was the only item on the list.

All in all, Ronan found he was okay with that.


End file.
